The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Traditional database queries are generated and used by skilled computer programmers to access data from a data source, such as a database. Traditional database queries are useful in many fields (for example, scientific fields, financial fields, political fields, and/or the like). Typically, a computer programmer must determine the proper format for the query based on the type of database accessed, and must determine the parameters of the query users or analysts that are familiar with the requirements of the data needed. Some man-machine interfaces for generating reports in this manner are software development tools that allow a computer programmer to write and test computer programs. Following development and testing of the computer program, the computer program must be released into a production environment for use. Thus, this approach for generating queries may be inefficient because an entire software development life cycle (for example, requirements gathering, development, testing, and release) may be required even if only one element of the query requires changing, or one aspect of the database has changed. Furthermore, this software development life cycle may be inefficient and consume significant processing and/or memory resources.
Further, traditional queries must be formatted specifically as required by the type of data source accessed. Accordingly, traditional methods of database querying have difficulties with handling queries to various types of data sources at the same time.